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Pollster: Ohio is key

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
10/25/2012 08:41:44 AM EDT

General Motors retiree George Vukovich, and his wife, Nancy, discuss politics after voting at the Trumbull County Board of Elections in Warren, Ohio. About 850,000 jobs in this critical battleground state are tied to autos. AP PHOTO

By Matt Murphy

State House News Service

BOSTON -- Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos on Wednesday said Ohio will be critical to the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney with the path to victory in that state "difficult for the president," while former Gov. Michael Dukakis called the possible scenario of the election winner losing the popular vote "not very Democratic."

Paleologos, Dukakis and former Congressman and deputy Republican Party Chairman Peter Blute took part in a panel discussion Wednesday afternoon hosted by Suffolk University analyzing the presidential race and the state of presidential politics.

"Ohio is the road to the White House for both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney," Paleologos said, noting that his most recent poll in that state showed the two men deadlocked at 47 percent apiece.

Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said any time an incumbent polls under 50 percent "it's very dangerous for you because you're the known commodity." Paleologos also outlined other challenges in the Buckeye State for Obama that include the diminished clout of Cuyahoga County and the potential impact of third-party candidates in a close race.

Though Obama leads Romney by 13 points among the 20 percent of Ohio voters who have already cast ballots, Paleologos said the Suffolk poll found independent Richard Duncan and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, of Massachusetts, capturing 2 percent each among votes already cast.

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"Those are Barack Obama voters, Jill Stein voters. You can't get those back," he said.

Cuyahoga County, which includes the greater Cleveland area, is also favorable to Democrats, but its share of the overall Ohio vote has been on the decline since the Clinton years from 12.4 percent to 11.3 percent in 2008. Paleologos said if Romney can win the other counties in the state by more than 225,000 votes, the former governor will win.

Though some Republicans still see states like Pennsyslvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as winnable for Romney, Paleologos said, "I don't see that as a pollster," but he does believe Virginia, Florida and North Carolina are trending toward Romney.

Dukakis, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988 against George H.W. Bush, said he didn't want to talk about the "horse race" in the 2012 presidential contest, but rather the negative influence money has had on the election, and the pitfalls of the Electoral College.

Dukakis called the Citizens United decision one of the worst three or four decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court, opening the door to unlimited corporate spending on elections and bringing forth what have come to be known as SuperPACs.

"Where in the U.S Constitution does it say that money is speech? Do you think the original framers thought that money was speech?" Dukakis asked, noting that Justice Antonin Scalia, who sided with the majority, was his classmate at Harvard Law School.

"This decision is just, in my judgment, without any constitutional merit at all," Dukakis said.

Election analysts in recent days have also outlined scenarios based on the current swing states under which Obama could win the Electoral College vote, and therefore the presidency, but still lose the national popular vote to Romney. This has happened four times in history, most recently in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the presidency to George W. Bush.

Having gone through the final days of a presidential campaign when candidates typically spend all their time and money in a handful of states, Dukakis said voters in non-swing states get ignored, and he believes every vote should be counted equally.

"The folks in these states are getting carpet-bombed with ads and canvassers while the rest of us are sitting around as spectators wondering what David's latest numbers are ...," Dukakis said. "I think it's a terrible distortion of what should be a totally Democratic process."

As an incumbent who polled under 50 percent in his last Congressional race that he lost to U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, Blute said he agreed with Paleologos's analysis that Obama could be in trouble in states where he is polling under that threshold.

Blute also said he doesn't like to see outside groups spending "huge sums in target races" in the wake of the Citizens United decision because it "distorts the process."

Blute, however, disagreed with Dukakis on the value of the Electoral College and said throughout history it has largely worked and protected smaller states from seeing presidential nominees spending all their time campaigning in the most populous areas of the country.

Following Romney's resurgence in the polls since his strong performance in the first debate with Obama, Blute said Romney has proven to voters he's "not the ogre" Democrats have painted him to be and done a good job of communicating his message. He also said the struggling economy presents a challenge for Obama to overcome.

Offering a bit of unsolicited advice to Obama, Paleologos recommended that the president "swallow your pride" and "be a man" and pull money and resources out of states like North Carolina to focus on Ohio. He also noted that enthusiasm among the 18- to 35-year-old demographic that propelled Obama four years ago has diminished.

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